toward a fund to establish institutions to provide
nurses for the sick poor.

During the latter years of her reign, when she was less and less to
be seen at public functions and ceremonies, many complaints were made
about her reputed neglect of royal duties. She felt the injustice
of such statements very keenly and with good reason. No allowances
were made for her poor health, for her years, for the family losses
which left her every year more and more a lonely woman. Her duties,
ever increasing in number and extent, left her no time, even if she
had possessed the inclination, to take part in pomp and ceremony.

The outburst of loyalty and affection on the occasion of her two
Jubilee celebrations proved that she still reigned supreme in the
nation's heart.

The Queen was not only a great monarch, but also a great statesman.
Consider for a moment the many and bewildering changes which took
place in her own and other countries during her reign. Our country
was almost continually at war in some portion of the globe. The
British Army fought side by side with the French against Russia in
the Crimea, and against the rebels in the Indian Mutiny; two Boer
wars were fought in South Africa in 1881, and 1899-1902. There were
also lesser wars in China, Afghanistan, Abyssinia, Zululand and
Egypt.

The Queen lived to see France change from a Monarchy to a Republic;
to see Germany beat France to her knees and become a united Empire,
thanks to the foresight of her great statesman Bismarck, and her
great general von Moltke. During the same year (1870) the Italian
army entered Rome, as soon as the French garrison had been withdrawn,
and Italy became a united country under King Victor Emmanuel.

Despite the fact that the map of Europe was continually changing,
England managed to keep clear of international strife, and this was
in no small degree due to the personal influence of the Queen.

The England of her early years would be an absolutely foreign country
to us, if by some magic touch we were to be transplanted back down
the line of years. It was different in thought, feeling, and outlook.
The extraordinary changes in the modes of travelling, by means of
which numbers of people who had never even thought of any other
country beside their own, were enabled to visit other lands, broke
down, bit by bit, the barrier between the Continent and ourselves.
England became less of an insular and more of a continental power.

The social